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The comic is a weapon charged with future

Today we woke up all combative and intellectual… as a present, we leave you this messy but lovingly made reflection.

Comics is art, and as such, it is rooted in creativity, the freest human tool of all. Consequently, we strongly believe there is no single way of making a comic. There is no set page number, format or target age, no professional degree that can tell you how it’s done, when you don’t even need to know how to write or draw. Much like you don’t need certificates for art, neither do you need them for comics. You are not more of a comic artist because you work for a big corporate publishing house or because you make DIY fanzines, let alone because of the quality or price of your printing paper, or you artist’s technique. A comic is a comic and that’s that. Good, bad, average, but still a comic.

In short, there are endless forms of creating. And even though there are wonderful techniques for making our creations look and read great; creation itself is much more mysterious than any of those theories and may surprise us unexpectedly. We don’t need (super) heroes, color covers, pinups, narrative acts, story arcs, cliffhangers, or any of these things which act as a crutch on creation, when comics are much more about creation itself than how we create.

We are so afraid of free creation! Dividing everything into panels, production guidelines and narrative acts, yet we’re always blown away by some experimental comic. This eagerness to classify and categorize renders out efforts fruitless. Instead, when we take other points of view, when we constantly move and seek new grounds, our work is renewed and refreshed.

Thus, today we rise against all that never made any sense to us. Since we know the audience reads what exists, and if it doesn’t exist, feels compelled to invent it, and that’s precisely where we come in (we were and are the audience): not to satisfy, but to create. We didn’t come to break the rules, but to follow our own, and to celebrate whoever follows their own heart in this endeavor. We want to see comics of all shapes and sizes. The last thing we want is to pose as experimental or groundbreakers, condemning the techniques we use and love (technique is technique and without technique there’s no technique, y’know). We don’t have lots of experience nor do we want to talk about it, we just draw and write; print and staple; we work with our hearts in our brains (or vice versa), gaining experience as we go along, but we will never be anything but ourselves.

In any case, let us make comics, again and again. Naturally, spontaneously, hypertheoretical, structured, chaotic, professional, amateur, in any way possible… but let us make them… nonstop. And maybe we’ll find some meaning to what we are saying with all these comics.